Human Jawbone Found Embedded Into Tile by Couple Renovating Bathroom

A family renovating their bathroom have been left shocked to discover what experts suspect is a section of human jawbone in one of the new tiles that has been installed.

In a Reddit post shared under the handle u/Kidipadeli75, a man, who asked not to be named and would only disclose that he is based in Europe, shared an image of what he suspects is a “mandible” found embedded in the travertine stone floor of his parents’ new bathroom.

“I spotted the mandible because I am a dentist and it looked very familiar,” he told Newsweek. “It was not so much the teeth but the shape of the arch.”

The man added: “At first, I thought it was a fossil of a random animal. Then, with a closer look, I realized it was very familiar and looked human.”

The dentist said that it was a little unnerving discovery. “I was unsettled at first, but also I was in disbelief that it could be human. I needed a specialist’s help.”

That’s what led him to share the discovery on Reddit. From there, the poster was able to source the expertise of John Hawks, a professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He regularly writes about paleoanthropology, the study of human evolution through fossil and archaeological records.

The dentist discovered through his parents that the travertine was sourced from Turkey. A closer inspection of some of the other tiles revealed more potential fossils, though nothing as significant as this potential mandible.

Travertine is a type of limestone known to form around natural springs. The water that emerges from this source can often carry with it high levels of dissolved calcium carbonate, which forms rocks when the water evaporates or cools.

In a post written on his blog, johnhawks.net, Hawks said that it is common for fossils of dead animals, including humans, to form within travertine. He added that it’s not necessarily a surprise for one to turn up in a bathroom tile like this, as they aren’t that closely inspected.

“Quarries rough-cut travertine and other decorative stone into large panels, doing basic quality checks for gaps and large defects on the rough stone before polishing,” Hawks said. “Small defects and inclusions are the reason why people want travertine in the first place, so they don’t merit special attention.”

Hawks added that it is unlikely anyone buying travertine would see the panels until installation. “What this means is that there may be lots more hominin [a type of primate directly ancestral to humans] bones in people’s floors and showers,” he wrote.

“Most will be hard to recognize. Random cross-sections of hominin bones are tough to make out from other kinds of fossils without a lot of training.

“Certainly, somebody has more pieces of the mandible,” Hawks added. “If you take another look at your shower wall and suspect an ancient human is looking back at you, it might actually be one.”

In this instance, while the dentist said his parents did express concern “about having a paleoarchaeologist team destroying their home,” they are planning on handing the tile over to an expert for further study.

Having been told that the mandible could potentially be anywhere between 100,000 and 1,000,000 years old, and represents the remnants of “a homo erectus or similar who fell into a hot spring and died,” the man has high hopes for what the experts might discover.

“One of the anthropologists told me it is like finding the Mona Lisa; you cannot sell it, you have to put it in a museum,” the poster said.

Newsweek contacted Hawks for comment via his blog.